Had me a trip to Japan earlier in the month.
Visited Kyoto, Osaka and Nara in a span of 5 days.
Though, 5 days really wasn’t enough…
Kyoto had lots to see and do, Osaka, more of the shopping than eats, and Nara was all about the deer.
Will definitely be back to Kyoto again in the future.
So I haven’t really been paying much attention to this rather neglected blog of mine ever since I started work and got all caught up in the never ending rat race. Been working really hard and never really took much of a break since.
2 long weekends this August, with the first “long” weekend due to National Day. “Long” weekend in the sense that Thursday was a public holiday and almost 3/4 of the office took leave on Friday. How’d I know 3/4 of the office wasn’t there? Simple… I was the remaining quarter who went back to work on that Friday.
Luckily, the following week had another long holiday due to the Hari Raya holiday. Took advantage of this and took 2 days additional leave from the meagre scraplets of leave I had left and Scooted off to Australia, Gold Coast for an extra long weekend.
Went and stayed around Hope Island. It’s a darn beautiful place, ideal to own a home in. Seriously, almost every home there had their own pontoon where homeowners could dock their boat/yatch/jetski/skip.
Went to the O’Reilly’s vineyard, ate a 2-person sampler picnic lunch that 4 people had trouble finishing and bought lots of great wine. Headed off to Mount Tamborine and soaked in the beautiful sights and saw glow-worms in an artificial cave setting.
Ate tonnes of seafood there. Regretably, the shrimp/prawns there were not so good as they were already mostly precooked and by the time they were served on the plate, they had the chewy consistency of a rubber band.
Went down from the Queensland State to New South Wales in a 1 hour drive to Byron Bay to see the lighthouse and be at the easternmost point of the Australian continent. Now, all I have to do is to go to the northernmost point of the Australian continent and I’d have been to all of the most extreme points of Australia. ALso, had the best seafood lunch at Fishheads of the entire lunch there. It was worth the hour’s drive down all in all.
Wanted to find me some nougats to bring back, but surprisingly, they were really hard to find. One point being that this was a free & easy trip, we literally skipped out on all the super touristy spots which might have been a factor, but going to all the various shopping centers, weekend markets in Gold Coast yielded not even a whiff of the delectable goodie. Macademia nuts were a hard find too, though I would think that it wasn’t probably the season for it.
All in all, I’d just let the pictures speak for themselves. As usual, it’s a selection of the selection that I’d post online. Some memories aren’t to be shared with everyone.
Yeah, I’m selfish and I know it. *grinz*
A little late to be posting it up, but anyways, here it is.
Visited a variety of places during the trip to China during the winter period. Well, it wasn’t exactly the full blown cold winter season, but temperatures were hovering about the low 10 deg Cs. The coldest it ever got to was 0 or -1 deg C, but that was at 三清山 when we were hiking around the mountain.
I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.
Gallery of pics below!
Went to Kuala Lumpur last week for a few days for some R & R and I decided to bring along the newly acquired Holga 135 BC instead of my Canon or Sony DSLRs. Went in with an ISO 400 colour film with 36 exposures.
On the last day, when I thought I had rewound the film fully, I opened up the camera back and realised that the film had not totally rewound to my great HORROR!
In my mind, I thought, “Shit, there goes the entire film… … … -.-||| ”
Luckily, only about 10 or so photos were totally wiped out from the accidental exposure, leaving most of the other photos relatively intact.
So these are what’s left after developing the film. Effects are not too bad, though the few double exposure shots that I tried turned out pretty horrible, so I’m leaving them out… haha
Went to Hokkaido, Japan for a 1 week trip recently. Had quite a good time there, eating alot of seafood, enjoying the weather and scenary. Didn’t really do much of shopping as I’m not really much of a shopper and I was looking more at “Made in Japan” goods rather than those made elsewhere. This pretty much limited the stuff I could buy, mostly all the foodstuffs there actually.
Sharing some photos of the places that I visited in the trip. Mostly taken with my Canon EOS 50D with 18-200mm lens.
Map of major destinations for the trip
Asa-ichi Seafood Market at Hakodate. Live crabs, squids and sea urchins as well as other seafood for sale there.
Went down to Bintan for the weekend for some R&R. Now that I’m back, I just wish that I hadn’t returned. Overall, it’s a good place to relax, BUT, it’s really very very pricey over there…
Well, seems like my wanderlust is acting up again…
I wanna go overseas again!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The last trip to Jogja was pretty good and I don’t mind going again, just that I don’t have firstly, the money and secondly, the time to go.
That being said, probably be going off to Bintan for the weekend and probably to Japan, Hokkaido sometime later this year.
I CAN”T WAIT!!!!!
Just came back from a 4 day 3 night trip to Jogja. Went down to several places of interest, Borobodur and the Kraton as well as several other areas whose names I’ve kind of forgotten.
I really love the place there. The people there are friendly, warm and beautiful. A stark contrast to the cold, distant and ugly Singaporeans and the various “Foreign Talents” here…
On the way to Borobodur, passed by a town that is still recovering from the effects of the recent Merapi volcano eruptions last November. The area above used to be a marketplace, and is now currently buried under a heavy layer of volcanic ash and volcanic rocks.
Efforts to clear up the aftermath is still on-going and will probably take a long time. I’ve come to be thankful for the relative safety of Singapore where we don’t experience such large scale natural disasters. At the same time, I’ve also come to admire the Indonesians’ spirit of entrepreneurship and dedication towards returning life to normal whilst trying to live their lives as they did before the disaster.
All in all, I really want to return back to Jogja one more time, to finish what I couldn’t see, to do what I couldn’t do and to see what I didn’t see.
Looks like I’ll be going overseas afterall.
To Yogyakarta & Borobudur for a weekend.
Damn… the trip cost me all the money I earned whilst working part time over the holidays…
But I guess, it will be worth it
looking to go somewhere in January…
So far, flights seem damn expensive…
KL flights seem pretty cheap at the moment… but then… dunno where’s good to go there…
Haiz, I really really really wanna go overseas!
Life, as I know it 